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Known for: Helping foreigners sitting in Afghan jails. The Daily Beast‘s Elise Jordan just profiled the daughter of an American dad and South Korean mom, mother of three and 2004 Miss Wisconsin, who is currently a registered attorney with the American, British, Italian, Norwegian, German, and Canadian Embassies and recently negotiated the release of high-profile Brit detainee Bill Shaw. Motley wears neither a dress, veil nor headscarf in trial and is, according to Jordan, “one of the most respected lawyers in Kabul.”

Motley, who was crowned Mrs. Wisconsin in 2004, grew up in Milwaukee and earned her law degree at Marquette University. She had never traveled outside the U.S. before she began working to rebuild Afghanistan’s legal system in 2008 as a part of the State Department’s Justice Sector Program. Traveling around the countryside—visiting women’s prisons, juvenile detention centers, and some of Afghanistan’s roughest and toughest jails—she found that “not only were due process violations being ignored for virtually all of the accused persons, but there were quite a few foreigners trapped within the legal and prison system,” she says.

Don’t call an Asian brotha inscrutable, unless his name is Danny Pang.

Pang, the OC financier who was often called “California’s Bernie Madoff” because of the multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme he allegedly pulled off through his Irvine-based Private Equity Management Group, died September 12 at the age of 42 from an apparent drug overdose. Newport Beach police, who were summoned to Pang’s home on September 11, where they found the accused fraudster unconscious, believe Pang’s death was a suicide. Pang faced civil charges for defrauding his investors out of millions and criminal charges for evading currency-reporting laws at the time of his death.

Pang’s entire adult life, it seems, was marked by shady stuff. Although he told investors that he held an undergraduate degree and an MBA from UC Irvine and was elected chairman of the Asian Pacific Student & Staff Association there, the school has no records of him attending except for a single summer term.

Then there was his marriage to Janie Louise Pang (pictured above), a former stripper, who called police to their home four times in the 90′s for domestic disturbance complaints, according to the WSJ. In May 1997, Ms. Pang wanted out of the marriage and hired a private investigation firm to spy on her husband. The day after the firm caught her husband holding hands with another woman, Ms. Pang was murdered in their home. This was the family maid’s eyewitness account of the killing, from court records:

…the family’s maid heard Ms. Pang, her 5-year-old at her side, answer the door and begin talking to the visitor, who asked if she was “Miss Pang.”

She then began screaming. The maid saw her run through the house, chased by an elegantly dressed man carrying a briefcase and holding a gun. As Ms. Pang cowered in a closet, he shot her dead.

Janie Louise Pang’s murder still remains unsolved.

As for his corrupt business dealings, Daily Intel published a detailed timeline chronicling them around the time of his arrest in April, calling Pang’s alleged fraud “the most insane…of 2009.” Which is saying something.

“Danny was a wonderful husband, loving father, and honest businessman. It is distressing that Danny had to endure such a mean-spirited assault on his character without ever having a chance to defend himself. We remain steadfast in our believe that Danny would have been vindicated if he had been given that opportunity.”

But wasn’t that what his trial, which had been recently delayed until next August, was for?

Last week, Kari Ferrell was charged with felony counts of identity fraud and passing bad checks in Salt Lake. So what, right? She did the crime, now she’s gotta do the time?

True dat. But the thing is, the Hipster Grifter’s hometown doesn’t get her. Nor, I imagine, does she get it, which maybe explains why she fled the state as soon as she stole enough was able in order to seek refuge in Philly and Williamsburg with like-minded people, i.e. other people with giant tattoos, cool record collections, and a charming way with words.

“Kari Ferrell, who has been referred to by media outlets as the “Hipster Grifter,” was charged Thursday…“

“Who has been referred to by media outlets as the Hipster Grifter”? “Media outlets”? Did my dad write that sentence in-between grumpily grading exams? This is the kind of prose you lay on the girl who coined the term “mouth-handjobs” and dubbed herself “Korean Abdul-Jabbar”???

Before his sentencing Monday for committing $65 billion in fraud in the largest Ponzi scheme ever, Bernard Madoff told his victims in court, “I live in a tormented state for all the pain and suffering I created. I left a legacy of shame. It is something I will live with for the rest of my life.” While Judge Denny Chin, who presided over the case, had reportedly been “unfailingly courteous, and almost solicitous” toward Madoff throughout the trial, Chin still handed him the maximum sentence of 150 years in prison for his crimes. He also called these crimes “extraordinary evil.”

Under normal circumstances, we might say this was a case of Hardass Asian Sentencing, but in Madoff’s case, is there such a thing?